PEATS Cyprus- Crafts and Traditional Skills (Oct 23 Turing)

Accommodation: Accommodation is in a courtyarded traditional house in shared rooms.

Meals: Self catering.

Communication: internet is available, mobile networks readily available (you will need to check with your provider)

Transport: Vehicles available to get to site, public transport available

Flights: Grampus will email students with a flight option that fits within the travel grant and which arrives at a time that suits the host. Students are welcome to look for alternative flights, but the arrival times must match those of the offered flight and be within the travel grant. Students have to fund their own way to the UK airport

GHIC: Students must apply for a Global Health Insurance Card before the placement, and carry it on them at all times

INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND

Host is Kato Drys Community Council. Based in the mountainous region of Larnaca District, KDCC has worked closely with Grampus Heritage from Cumbria in the UK since 2011. The partner regions share some similarities in the patrimony of their crafts. Cumbria, a rural area, developed a lace making tradition, with centres in Workington and Whitehaven, although in recent years, they have become focused on Kendal (a carpet making town originally). Grampus worked in the past with the Guild based in Harrington, West Cumbria. Lefkara and Kato Drys in Cyprus + a cluster of surrounding villages developed a distinctive embroidery lace tradition in ‘Lefkaritika’, with Greek Cypriot lacemakers (pleumistras) being taught by Venetian aristocrats and their retainers; later, in the Ottoman period, Turkish Cypriot lacemakers had some input and today it is a bicommunal skill and Grampus and Kato Drys have had some support from the founder of ‘Easyjet’, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, a passionate advocate for a united Cyprus. In ‘Green Village – Empowering Communities’, our Cypriot partnership ran the fashion event, ‘Your Granny Can Fly’ to help put Lefkaritika into Fashion and one output was the Green Village Shop which sells modern linen clothes with lace incorporations. We also add some work with wool into the programme, including preparing local fleece and processing it into yarn for macrame and crochet.   Ancient and contemporary mosaic  …although only very small fragments of Roman mosaics were found in Cumbria, neighbouring Yorkshire has good examples at Alborough; in Cyprus, neighbouring Limassol District has the famous Kourion Roman mosaics and Grampus worked with Cyprus’s Department of Antiquities to uncover Byzantine mosaics at Akrotiri.  Katy Galbraith from Scotland has worked for 6 years with Kato Drys and before that the Limassol Mosaic collective were an active partner to bring the ancient Cypriot mosaicing craft into the 21st century. Kato Drys and Lefkara have a cluster of local artists, whose common thread comes from the famous Cypriot artist, the late Stass Paraskos (Grampus still work closely with his daughter, Margaret Paraskos); In Cumbria, Grampus are partnered by Eden Arts led by Adrian Lochhead and this link has empowered Grampus’s contemporary art (painting) ambitions, which included ‘HUMEN’ (How to Understand My European Neighbour), which saw Cumbrian artists such as Kevin O’Connor and international artists from 7 countries creating communal art. In Cyprus the art of fine line painting has become a specialism of former Cyprus College of Art’s, Peter Bird, and this has become a cornerstone of the training offer

Art and craft as a means of social mediation and a mechanism for raising knowledge of sustainability issues is at the heart our two organisations training activities. We focus on use of natural and recycled materials and try to help candidates understand environmental, cultural, social and economic sustainability questions and answers (four pillars of sustainability).

GENERAL

Arrival in Paphos, transfer to Pano Lefkara. . You have shared use of a car, although drivers must normally be over 23.

Some tips…..

Accommodation in a large village house, with self catering kitchen. You prepare your own food.

Driving is on the left, as in the UK.

We use 3-pin plugs, like the UK.

Currency is the EURO, the village has an ATM.

You receive 90 EURO per week to buy food.

The training day is 09.00 to 16.30 with 1 hour for lunch.

After work, swimming in the sea is sometimes possible

CONTENT

Week One:

Focus on textiles – Wool, we collect fleeces from a local shepherd and wash them, card the wool and do some spinning (3 days). We then have 2 days of training in crochet. We aim to produce something useful like a bag or item of jewelry. All work is done at the Old Olive Mill, our base. On Saturday we visit Nicosia.

Week Two:

The week starts with 2 days of lace making….. you will make a small panel of embroidery lace incorporating an eight-pointed star and some cut threadwork. Then you do 3 days of mosaic, followed by a Saturday trip to the Roman mosaics at Kourion near Limassol. We aim to do 2 pieces, a round mosaic panel and a small rectangular one.

Week Three:

This is an art week. There are 3 days of icon painting, most usually onto reclaimed wood, although we may use shards of pottery, The teacher is Aylin Myumyunova, who has a classical fine art training. For the remaining 2 days, you work on a decorative art project, which could be upscaling a textile pattern or decorating a ceramics item. On Saturday, we visit some chapels to see iconography in the nearby mountains

FUNDING

The Turing grant will cover accommodation, food (3 meals a day), return, flights, insurance, transport to site and supervision. Participants will have to make sure they have their EHI or GHI card and budget for personal purchases and excursions.

This project has been funded with support from the Turing scheme, funded by the UK government.

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